Ask Revs

Q. How is the information describing the images on the Revs Digital Library created?

Answer

The Revs Institute staff works on creating the information describing the images, also known as metadata. We use a variety of research materials in addition to any notes that the photographer may have left with the collection to create the metadata.

To meet our goal of releasing around 6,000 new images each month, we strive to have a baseline of certain fields filled in: title, photographer, source, and if known: year, date, event, venue, city, state, country, marque, model, and people. Sometimes these fields are unknown, which is when we welcome our hardworking contributors’ help!